Fading Embers
by Gaereth
Summary: The world of the Shinobi is hard and cruel, leaving no room for softness or kindness. Yet Sarutobi Asuma finds himself wondering why... Why do ninjas continue to kill for money, when it is only their humanity that they are truly killing... One-Shot


Fading Embers

A Naruto One-Shot

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, but I do claim the idea of the Five Assassins. If you want to use it or some other idea I created, be sure to ask.

AN: A one-shot about Asuma I felt I needed to write. Be warned; there's angst in them thar hills. Rated M for a reason, people.

Sarutobi Asuma stared blankly at the whitewashed ceiling above him, his eyes unfocused, unseeing. Thought the night was chilly, he was awash with sweat, and trickles of salty persperation crept slowly down his brow. He had to force himself to breath calmly and slowly, keeping himself motionless only by iron will. Don't react. Let the moment pass. It was only a bad dream.

Just another bad dream.

_The smoke rose lazily, wisps curling slowly around the full moon._

Relax.

_Blood coated his arm, and he waded through pools of crimson, feeling the lifeblood of countless innocents dragging at him, trying to drown him in their sorrow, their vengeance._

Breathe deeply. In...

_He raised his arm high, kunai poised..._

Out...

_The blade flashed down, cutting deep into the woman's chest._

In...

_He reached down to his shuriken holster, crouching low to the ground..._

Out...

_The steel stars flew with trained precision, embedding themselves into the trachea of the teenage boy._

_The body seemed to take forever to fall, years passing as it inched towards the ground. Finally, with a thud that seemed to set the earth itself shuddering, the dead flesh hit the dirt, lifeless eyes open and staring, staring into a dark eternity._

He brought a calloused hand to his forehead, clutching at his skull. The headache was back, damn it all. First the nightmares, and now... _Damn._

He sat up slowly, trying not to wake up Kurenai. Poor girl, she must've been exhausted from her mission; best to let her keep sleeping. Besides, he didn't want to bother her about this... There were some things he couldn't tell anyone, even her...

_The infant screamed in terror as he brought the kunai closer, ending its life as painlessly as he could. There was no glory to be gained in unnecessary pain._

He gritted his teeth as the pain in his head flared in unexpected strength. Carefully, he slipped out of the bed, making sure not to rouse Kurenai from her sleep. He walked across the wooden floor silently, instinct from decades of stealth training. Reaching the window, he opened it quietly and stared out, looking at the moon. It was full that night, shining with an unusual luminence. Just like that day...

_The village burned. The smoke rose lazily, wisps curling slowly around the full moon. The ground was stained black with the blood, and the fire colored everything a sickly red, flickering and spitting in the night._

_This was no longer a village._

_This was Hell._

An unbidden curse slipped from between clenched teeth, and his hands clenched into fists, muscles in his broad shoulders tense. Checking on Kurenai one last time, he snatched a pack of cigarettes from his dresser and jumped out the window, despite the fact that his apartment was on the fifth floor. Twisting his body with practiced ease, he grabbed the edge of the window and used it as a pivot, turning himself about in midair and landing with both feet on the side of the wall. Releasing the window, he slowly walked up the side of the building, instinctively channeling the chakra the exercise required. It was second nature to him, as natural as breathing or sleeping or...

Killing.

_Steel flashed, blood spurted, bodies fell. And the moon watched it all, its lone eye unblinking._

Reaching the top of the apartment building, he slung himself over the edge and onto the ceiling proper. He sprawled himself lazily on the edge of the building, one leg dangling over the edge, the other drawn up close to his chest. Flipping open the worn pack of cigarettes, he took out a slightly bent gasper and set it to his lips. He took out his lighter and flipped it open, holding it to his lips and covering it with his free hand to shield the flame. There was a flare of light and a hint of smoke, then a clink as he shut the lighter and stowed it inside the pack, then set the pack beside him.

He took a deep drag from the cigarette, letting the smoke do what he could not; relax himself. Staring at the moon, he let the smoke drift out of his mouth, watching as it curled and coiled its way up, before it was swept away by a gust of wind. He blew out another smoke ring, deep in thought.

That was how it had been. He had been given orders. And he could no sooner disobey those orders than he could cut off his own hand. He was a shinobi, born and raised. And shinobi lived and died according to the whims of their employers, to the discretion of their betters. Ninjas were merely blades. You tell a sword where to thrust, and it thrusts. And so it is with a shinobi.

"That's all we are," said Asuma to himself, smoke drifting out of his mouth. "Well trained, expensive weaponry, to be used in whatever way deemed necessary. And discarded when unnecessary." He looked down at the loincloth about his waist, which he never took off except to bathe. The symbol of Fire stared back, red against the pale moon's light. And on his back, the old mark seemed to burn, flaring up as the memories returned. He could feel it again, although it had been years since he had felt it burn like this.

The Black Flame. It was dark, blazoned across his broad back, tattooed deep into the skin. A burn, and yet not a burn, it marked him as its property as surely as chains would have done. Beside its power and purpose, the smaller red flame on the loincloth seemed to glimmer and die. It was a testimony to Asuma's ignoble past; a marker that displayed where his career as a shinobi had once taken him.

It was the mark of the Five Assassins of Fire.

Similar to the Twelve gaurdians, of which he was now a member, their only commander had been the Fire Daimyo himself. Not even the Hokage could countermand their orders when they acted under the Daimyo's authority. Few are privy to their existence, since most of those who would know are dead. They were nothing; a dagger in the dark, a flame in the night, a nameless fear. For those that the Daimyo marked for death, but were too powerful or important to openly move against, he sent these five. Of these five, Asuma had once been one. By the orders of the Daimyo, he had killed again and again, slaughtered innocents and villians alike; a motionless statue who would only kill when ordered to. And when the Daimyo summoned him, the black flame would burn in his back, driving him until the task was done.

He took another deep drag from the cigarette, blowing the smoke softly out of his nose. That had been some years ago. Now, he was a member of the Twelve Gaurdians, those who secretly and openly defended the Daimyo from assassins such as Asuma had once been. His days of silent killing and pain were over now. But... the dreams haunted him still, and the headaches plagued him when he tried to forget.

He looked out over the village he served and protected, smoke curling past his eyes. There was the great Hokage Monument, the faces of four great men carved deep into the side of the mountain, set in stone that was as steadfast and umflinching as their determination. There stood the Hokage Tower, light still shining through the windows; a silent testament to the constant vigilance and readiness of the Konoha Shinobi Corps. Towards the edge of the village, the fires of the forges burned bright as the smiths hammered out steel and iron, forging weapons and crafting armor for their loyal protectors and assassins. And, on the east side of town, the lights and sounds of Konoha's Red-Light district, where many of his peers gathered to relax and enjoy life's more exotic pleasures, a temporary reprieve from the insanity of a shinobi's daily life. And all about him, Konoha breathed softly, its lights shining out against the night.

This is the village he would die for.

And had killed for.

Finishing off his cigarrette, he idly tossed it off the side of the building and pulled out another one. Another flare of light and wisp of smoke as he gave in to the one addiction he allowed himself. Nicotine had kept him alive, relaxing him when he thought he was too tense to breathe. When his waking thoughts turned to escape from this life he lived, these little friends helped him calm himself, helped him think straight once more. Yes, it was a foul addiction, and one he did not truly enjoy having, but it was better than many of his peers indulged in. Gekkou Hayate was renowned for his use of strange, mind-numbing drugs that he somehow obtained from deep Rice Country, where organized gangs made their living from such things. One of the most respected and feared shinobi in all of Konoha, Hatake Kakashi, had turned to cocaine for many years in order to escape from himself, before finding that burying himself in Icha Icha Paradise did the trick as well. And Anko...

He shook his head, his eyes darkened by pity for the Special Jounin. Her life was terrible. So was Kakashi's, and Hayate's, and Ibiki's, and Genma's, and Kurenai's, and his own... And so many other shinobi who, day in and day out, danced with Death himself. It was only through Fate's twisted sense of humor that they were not dead yet, while so many friends and enemies were. Many times he had wondered to himself whether it was not better to be dead himself, with the chance at the afterlife or reincarnation that religion offered, rather than still live and continue this existence, devoid of any real friends and filled with sworn enemies.

Each and every day, mission requests poured into Konoha. Escort missions, surveillance missions, scouting missions, patrolling missions, containment missions... Those were the good ones, the ones that gave you a decent survival rate. But then there were the others. Kidnapping. Subterfuge. Espionage. Spying.

_Assassination_.

The cigarette was nearly gone now, and was discarded and replaced with a fresh one.

Each and every day, every Chuunin and Jounin in Konoha dreaded standing before the Hokage, sweat on their brow, praying that they were not to be assigned one of those tasks. Praying that they would not have to steal away an innocent girl, so that their client could use her as a hostage against his enemies. Praying that they would have to sneak into a peaceful city and poison their water supply, in retaliation to some stupid insult a daimyo had thrown at his peers, who saught revenge.

Praying that they would not have to kill again.

Asuma had killed so many times, he had lost count. He had been forced to be quite inventive. One paranoid victim had forced his servants to taste his food and wine, to ensure that he would not be poisoned. Pity he had not noticed that his toothpaste had tasted different... at least, not until after he was dead. Another man had worn custom-made body armor under his clothing, to protect him from physical attack. But who needs a weapon when it is so much easier to trip him up with chakra strings just when he's standing at the top of a flight of stairs, forcing him to smash his skull against the bottom of the stairs and break his neck?

Oh, yes, Asuma had killed. More than that; he had _slaughtered_. and his one wish, out of all the things life offered, was to never have to kill again.

But that would never happen. Not while crue and vile men were still willing to pay good money to rid themselves of nuisances or take advantage of their peers. Not while there will still shinobi who were willing to sell their humanity for some quick money.

A fourth cigarette was brought out, and the flame crackled as it set the tobacco ablaze.

Shinobi were whores, when you boiled it right down. Nothing more than cheap sluts, selling their services to the highest bidder, so that their client could obtain something that would have been impossible to do alone. They sold their bodies; not for sexual purposes, but they sold them nonetheless, forced to accept any wound as part of the job.

Like most whores, many shinobi detested what they did, persevering only by telling themselves it was necessary for the prosperity of the village. Then again, there were those who took a sick pleasure in it, developing a form of insanity as a way of getting rid of the pain. And there were those who simply lost themselves, performing each and every task with the same emotionless professionalism as the last task.

Shinobi were nothing but tools, just like the 'ladies of the evening'.

Asuma's cigarette was burning out, the embers close enough to his hand to sear the skin, but he didn't notice, staring emotionlessly at the moon. He was tired. Oh, Kami, so tired. If only he could just stay like this forever... doing nothing, feeling the nicotine course through his body, calm and peaceful... even serene. If he could sit and stare at this brilliantly full moon the rest of his life, no longer being forced to participate in the mindless violence of the shinobi world... If only he could simply be at peace for once in his adult life.

But it would never be that way.

Never.

Sarutobi Asuma dropped his cigarrette and turned away from the full moon, turned away from Konoha, turned away from the terrible memories the combination brought upon him. He sat on the roof of the building, staring sightlessly at some roughly-scrawled graffiti on the roof tiles before him. He felt the sorrow, the sadness building up inside of him, the tired hopelessness, the impotent knowledge that the pain of the past would only be amplified by the future, that there was not a thing he could do to stop the endless march of Death.

His abandoned cigarette flared to life, consuming the final shreds of tobacco in one brilliant blaze, and then died away. The final tendril of smoke drifted away in the breeze, softly caressing his face as it faded into the night.

Sarutobi Asuma, son of the Sandaime Hokage, Jounin of the Leaf, member of the Twelve Guardians and former member of the Five Assassins, buried his face in his hands and wept.

AN: Another one-shot from me, possibly one of the laziest and most easily distracted authors in all the Naruto fandom. Rather angsty, I know, but ever since Asuma died I began to look at the life the shinobi of Konoha led, especially the Jounin. I saw Anko's pain, Kurenai's loneliness, Asuma's desperation. I couldn't help but write this, even though it hurt me as I wrote it. If this story makes you feel sad or depressed... At least you're not alone.

Well, better go work on something that'll cheer me up. If you read, please review so I can know what you thought. Thanks in advance.

'Til next time,

Gaereth


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